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by Sarah Alderson
Pub. Date: August 4th 2011 (UK) April 10th 2012 (Canada)
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Pages: 318
17-year-old Lila has two secrets she’s prepared to take to the grave. The first is that she can move things just by looking at them. The second is that she’s been in love with her brother’s best friend, Alex, since forever.
After a mugging exposes her unique ability, Lila decides to run to the only people she can trust—her brother and Alex. They live in Southern California where they work for a secret organisation called The Unit, and Lila discovers that the two of them are hunting down the men who murdered her mother five years before. And that they’ve found them.
In a world where nothing and no one is quite as they seem, Lila quickly realises that she is not alone—there are others out there just like her—people with special powers—and her mother’s killer is one of them…
YOU CAN READ MY REVIEW HERE... now onto the Q&A!~
Q: First of all, Sarah, welcome to OMFG!Books. We're glad to have you! To start off, please tell us a little about yourself.
Thanks for having me! About myself, let’s see…I grew up in London but I’m a hippy vagabond at heart so now I live in Bali which is about the most perfect place on earth. I used to work for a non-profit in London running volunteer projects and writing funding applications and then I decided I’d had enough so I quit my job and my husband and I took our then 3 year old daughter on a round the world trip to find somewhere else to live. Somewhere hotter that didn’t involve a daily commute on South Eastern trains or slaving 9-5 for other people. We are SO happy we took the risk. Every day we stare at our life, at the awesome bamboo school our daughter goes to, at the coconuts piled outside our front door, at the fact we’re both working at things we’re passionate about, and we shake our heads at the amazingness of life.
Q: What inspired the story of Hunting Lila? And in particular, what inspired Lila herself?
Hunting Lila came to me one day when I was swimming lengths in a vague attempt to get fit. I didn’t get fit but I did dream up Alex.I wanted Lila to be the kind of girl everyone could relate to, who just happens to have a special ability – she can move things just by looking at them. Then I wanted to explore what would happen if she had no control over it…and if she was madly in love with her brother’s best friend and had been all her life…and if her mother had been murdered. It all started with a massive series of WHAT IFs….everytime I came to a dead end I’d think ‘what if…’
Q: Which character in Hunting Lila was the most difficult to write?
None of them particularly were hard to write. Suki was a challenge as she can hear people’s thoughts so I had to be aware in every scene what every character was thinking – that’s a good thing though as it makes the writing sharper because you have to know the intention behind every character’s actions. You’re not just using them as devices to move the plot forward.
Q: Do you believe that people could have powers like those in Hunting Lila in reality?
I think anything’s possible. I live in Ubud in Bali – it’s hippy central. There are people here who think we are descended from blue aliens, that we can astrally project at will, who see auras (like Amber does) as well as dead people, and that sticking a hose up your bum and washing your colon out with coffee will make you live longer. If I’ve learned anything here it’s to have an open-mind.But no, I don’t think that there are people who are like Lila and can flip cars over just by giving them an evil stare.
Q: What are you currently working on?
I’m just finishing a very funny adult novel that I’ve written in collaboration with another author, I’m putting final touches to my next YA novel, writing a pilot screenplay and a million other things as well. I juggle a lot.
Q: Thank you so much for the interview! I look forward to reading Losing Lila.
Thanks for having me!
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Having spent most of her life in London, Sarah quit her job in the non profit sector in 2009 and took off on a round the world trip with her husband and princess-obsessed daughter on a mission to find a new place to call home. After several months in India, Singapore, Australia and the US, they settled in Bali where Sarah now spends her days writing by the pool and drinking lots of coconuts.She finished her first novel Hunting Lila just before they left the UK, wrote the sequel on the beach in India, and had signed a two book deal with Simon & Schuster by the time they reached Bali.A third book, Fated, about a teenage demon slayer, which was written during their stay in California, was published in January 2012 by Simon Pulse (an imprint of Simon & Schuster).She is currently working on several exciting new book projects and screenplays.
This post is a part of the Hunting Lila Canadian blog tourhosted by Simon & Schuster Canada
